My name is Carlo DeVito, and I am the author of East Coast Wineries: A Complete Guide from Maine to Virginia published by Rutgers University Press. This blog is dedicated to primarily east coast wines and wineries including Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia. It will also feature products and information from other regions.

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Thirsty Owl Wins 2007 Governor's Cup at NY Food & Wine

CONGRATULATIONS to Thirsty Owl Wine Company on Cayuga Lake for winning our Governor’s Cup with its 2006 Dry Riesling; and to Red Barn Winery near Syracuse for winning Winery of the Year accolades at the 2007 New York Wine & Food Classic in Napa , CA .

After a day and a half of swirling, sniffing, sipping and spitting, 24 expert judges ultimately rated Thirsty Owl’s Dry Riesling as the best of 790 New York wines entered, with other “Best of Category” wines including Swedish Hill Spumante Blush, Barrington Cellars 2006 Buzzard’s Blush, Pindar Vineyards 2005 Cabernet Franc, and Mazza Chautauqua Cellars 2005 Ice Wine of Vidal Blanc. In the “Specialty Wine” category, which includes non-grape fruit wines, meads, and other products, Red Barn’s 2006 Raspberry Wine took top honors, with its “Pauley’s Port” (made from Concord) also taking a Best of Class award, its Blueberry wine a Gold, along with several other medals for both grape and fruit wines. Other top contenders for Winery of the Year, which is based on the number and levels of medals, included (in order) Swedish Hill, Fox Run, Thirsty Owl, and Chateau LaFayette Reneau. Due to the increasing numbers of “specialty” wines and wineries, starting next year a new category will be created to recognize quality in those products, but the Winery of the Year award will be based on grape wines (since they are still over 95% of our industry’s production and consumption). Not surprisingly, the top winners started getting calls as soon as the results were posted on our web site, with one large Buffalo retailer immediately ordering 15 cases of the Thirsty Owl Dry Riesling. Many thanks to Teresa Knapp for doing a great job organizing the competition, the entire back room staff, our 24 terrific judges, and Peter Marks of Copia for being such a great and generous host. Next year’s Classic will return to New York State , with the exact location to be determined.

Congratulation to all the winners. Full results are available at www.newyorkwines.org under “What’s New”.

Pages

About Me

Carlo DeVito is a long time wine lover, and author of books and magazine articles. He is the author of Wineries of the East Coast. He has traveled to wine regions in California, Canada, up and down the east coast, France, Spain and Chile. He has been a published executive for more than 20 years. He shepherded the wine book program of Wine Spectator as well as worked with Kevin Zraly, Oz Clarke, Matt Kramer, Tom Stevenson, Evan Dawson, Greg Moore, Howard Goldberg, and many other wine writers. He has also published Salvatore Calabrese, Jim Meehan, Clay Risen, and Paul Knorr.
Mr. DeVito is the inventor of the mini-kit which has sold more than 100,000,000 copies world wide. He has also publisher such writers as Stephen Hawking, E. O Wilson, Philip Caputo, Gilbert King, James McPherson, John and Mary Gribbin, Thomas Hoving, David Margolick, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., John Edgar Wideman, Stanley Crouch, Dan Rather, Dee Brown, Susie Bright, and Eleanor Clift.
He is also the owner of Hudson-Chatham Winery, co-founder of the Hudson Berkshire Beverage Trail, and president of the Hudson Valley Wine Country.
https://carlodevito.wordpress.com/